Saul Alinsky's 1971 work "Rules for Radicals" has attracted recent attention as tools of the trade for community organizing - both online and in face to face environments. For example, Markos Moulitsas's "Taking Back The System" discusses how these rules inform community organization and action in the American progressive blog Daily Kos, an individual blog that's become a veritable political force of the "netroots" and has grown to a community blog staffed by nine and spawned thousands of community member diaries.
Alinsky's 12 Rules are summarized here (broken link!). The language is strident and confrontational (e.g., talking about those who oppose you as "enemies") but they are a good road map for not only understanding political dynamics, but acting locally to change them. While nominally set up for the progressive movement, these rules are rather non-ideological and can apply to all issues.
Excessive confrontation is not necessarily the best tactic in all circumstances. This is hardly the only apporach - we'll summarize ideas for a more cooperative, consensual approach soon.
The twelve rules are posted below - feel free to edit this page with examples or questions on what they mean to you.
Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
Never go outside the experience of your people.
Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.
Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
Keep the pressure on.
The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Alinsky's 12 Rules are summarized here (broken link!). The language is strident and confrontational (e.g., talking about those who oppose you as "enemies") but they are a good road map for not only understanding political dynamics, but acting locally to change them. While nominally set up for the progressive movement, these rules are rather non-ideological and can apply to all issues.
Excessive confrontation is not necessarily the best tactic in all circumstances. This is hardly the only apporach - we'll summarize ideas for a more cooperative, consensual approach soon.
The twelve rules are posted below - feel free to edit this page with examples or questions on what they mean to you.